


Before Pitfall

by newt-for-kaiju-justice (froggymurdock)



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Newt is punk and trans and you cant convince me otherwise, Pre-Canon, Tattoos, Trans Male Character, Trans Newton Geiszler, Violence, punk newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-29 23:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14483994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/froggymurdock/pseuds/newt-for-kaiju-justice
Summary: Newt's been fighting his whole life.





	Before Pitfall

Before Pitfall, he’s 7 years old and someone pushes him onto the sidewalk and his dad holds him while he cries. He looks in the mirror, wearing his uncle's old band t-shirts, and something feels wrong but he can’t put his finger on it. He will someday.

Before Pitfall, he’s 12 years old and he gets his first guitar- bright blue, with various dents throughout it. He plucks the low E string and falls in love and it’s not long before he’s belting out lyrics with his first band, and things feel almost alright, except that he knows he doesn’t really belong.

Before Pitfall, he’s 14 years old and wandering through the MIT campus for the first time. People stare at him, the short German kid with big glasses. He trips over his own feet and no one helps him, and he’s fine with that.

Before Pitfall, he’s 17 and angry as shit. He dyes his hair and binds his chest and tunes his guitar and screams his anger out at the unfair world. He starts fights and mostly loses, going home with bruised knuckles and a bloody nose and a black eye. He doesn’t smile much. He makes them call him Newt.

Before Pitfall, he’s 19 and he’s at his first protest- a feminist rally, with the ladies at MIT, but not him, he’s not a girl, not anymore. In fact, he’s the only boy there, period. He chants with them and raises his fist and it feels right. He keeps fighting, and now he wins a few times, leaving with a smile tinged red. He pierces his nose.

Before Pitfall, he’s 21 and he’s been teaching for a year. He gestures at the board and the students watch, giggling when his voice gets too high or when he stutters on a sentence. His classes are attended by all who can afford to come, and he sets up online classes for those who can’t afford it. He doesn’t call his family. He keeps forgetting to.

Before Pitfall, he’s 23 and watching Trespasser crash through San Francisco, following every newsfeed he can get his hands on, taking notes on how this thing moves and works because he’s a biologist for fuck's sake, and he knows that things won’t stop here. He gets it tattooed on his shoulder by a woman named Hui, and begins correspondence with a man named Hermann. He wears leather and patches and he’s still angry, and he pours that anger into his research.

Before Pitfall, he’s 26 and walking into the Shatterdome for the first time- his hair still dyed, his voice still high, his tattoo number increased to four. Someone calls him short, and he punches them and they leave with a bloody nose because even though he’s fighting a bigger fight, that doesn’t mean he can’t fight the smaller ones, too. He watches Yamarashi fall in Cali and he gets that one tattooed too, because it takes guts to wear your enemies on your body. He meets Mako Mori, and he shows her the ins and outs of their enemies because this girl will be a pilot someday. She calls him Uncle, he calls her Kid. He yells a lot, and the yelling feels good. He starts T.

Before Pitfall, he’s 28 and he’s not grown an extra inch, but that’s alright because he has facial hair and his chest is flat. His voice stays high. He met Hermann, and they fought for the first time, and the fighting felt wrong but also right, and Newt let it out on guitar, and his shrieking vocals wake the whole Shatterdome. He goes to another protest, an AntiFa rally, and he yells and screams and leaves with a new patch and it feels good. He gets more tattoos all over his body, and maybe he's the only thing keeping Hui in business, so he gets her a job in the PPDC. He was rejected from the Jaeger academy, but that’s alright because he has his lab and his kaiju bits and he’s alive.

Before Pitfall, he’s 30 and is watching Lady Danger (he refuses to use her first name, he refuses, because she’s beautiful and powerful and her name should not be a slur) stumble onto the Alaskan shore. He keeps working, even as his funding is cut for the first time, even as he’s relocated to Hong Kong, even as Hermann is forced to share a lab with him. They fight and it hurts, it feels so good. He stops dying his hair, because hair dye is just too hard to come by, and he removes his piercing because it keeps getting infected. He gets a punching bag and he and Mako share it because he knows fighting and she wants to fight, and so they stay angry together.

Before Pitfall, he's 33 and he and Hermann are the only ones left in K-Sci. He doesn’t sleep much, doesn’t eat enough, and calls his uncle more often than he usually would. With each fallen Jaeger, his punching bag becomes a little more worn, until there's no punching bag anymore and he’s left with his guitar. He watches Mako train again and again and smiles when she dyes her hair too, not questioning where she got it from, not needing to. He and Hermann keep fighting, and there’s something almost fond in it now- they move in sync as if they’re one person, not two separate entities, and Newt knows, at his core, that they’re compatible.

By Pitfall, he’s 35 years old and still angry. He picks fights, loses some, wins others. His period still comes, farther and farther apart now. He works and works and works- running himself into the ground, then picking himself back up and starting again. He drifts for the first time, and it feels wrong, and then he does it a second time, and it feels better, because Hermann is with him, and he thinks he’s in love. He hugs Mako when she returns and he hugs Hermann too (and maybe he and Hermann break off from the crowd and make out a little, who knows) and they drink and laugh and cry and it’s good, because the fight is over and, for once, that feels right.

For once, everything feels right.


End file.
